


A Bridge Between Worlds

by i_found_a_spoon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: M/M, Post Original Trilogy, Search for Ezra, Slow Burn, with a good dash of mortis mixed in, world between worlds kinda lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25926130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_found_a_spoon/pseuds/i_found_a_spoon
Summary: A Jedi distress call from over 2000 years ago echos across the galaxy, landing Luke in the middle of an unknown planet with all the wrong tools to explain what he's encountered. There, he meets Ezra Bridger, confirming that he is alive, and the search begins. Pulling from Sabine and Ahsoka's collective knowledge, Luke begins to unravel the mysterious disappearance of the former Jedi master.
Relationships: Ezra Bridger/Luke Skywalker, Luke Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Luke Skywalker & Sabine Wren
Comments: 11
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

Luke set aside the navicomputer in the cockpit of his x-wing and prepared for the jump to hyperspace. 

“R2, you’ve got the coordinates Leia sent to us, right?”

R2-D2 beeped a response. Of course he had the coordinates. How could he have lost them in the short time it’d taken to fly out here? 

Luke smiled and shook his head as R2 chirped out another snide comment. 

“Of course we’re going to investigate. It’s not everyday we get a two-thousand year old beacon thrown out at us.”

R2 let out a low, exasperated beep, and sent over the hyperdrive coordinates to the main computer. Luke grabbed the numbers and plugged them in, pushing the lever forward, and watching the stars spin around him as the x-wing jumped into hyperspace. 

The call had come from a specific location in the far reaches of the Outer Rim. Luke had been nearby, scouting locations for the Alliance’s new central operations location, but there were reasons beyond that that he was here to investigate. The beacon was coded to match a Jedi distress call from the old Republic, and was over 2000 years old at this point. 

Luke settled into the cockpit, trying to relax for the three hours they’d be in hyperspace. Truthfully, the past few months since the Battle of Endor weighed heavily on him. The galaxy looked to him as their savior, the man who defeated Darth Vader, the new start to the Jedi, a new hope. He was just wondering when they’d all realize he was just some farmer kid from the Outer Reaches, brought into this fight by accident. He didn’t possess the grandeur that the Jedi once had, nor a smidge of the honor. 

Luke didn’t want to belong to the world of new politics either. While Leia and the others relished the opportunity to start the galaxy anew, he had shied away from it. He wasn’t the man to ask. 

Truthfully, he’d rather be out here, finding strange beacons and chasing after them, exploring odd Jedi secrets that no one had ever dared to look into. 

He let out a breath and closed his eyes, feeling the force radiate around him as he began to meditate through the three hour ride. 

He felt the shift out of hyperspace before R2 alerted him. There was a call to it, the slowing of the movement, the way the color of the tunnel shifted, and the eventual crack as the ship left the lane and Luke saw- 

Nothing.

There didn’t appear to be anything here to generate the call. Luke shifted in the cockpit, sitting up straighter, trying to read the maps and data. 

“R2, do you get any readings from this? I’m not seeing anything here.” 

R2 clucked out a few words, followed by a screech. Luke sensed the form before he picked it up on the scanner, and looked upwards. He tilted the X-Wing forward, coming face to face with a deep red tetrahedral shape. The top splintered off, shapes frozen from some long ago explosion. 

Light was seeping out of the edges, clouding Luke’s vision until the world had gone all white. 

___

Luke’s hands tingled as he woke up. 

He slowly began to process the world around him. He was still in his X-Wing, but it had landed… somewhere. 

Where was he? How did he get here?

Luke stretched out, popping open the lid of the ship, standing up dizzily. 

A world of broken rocks and dirt greeted him. Dull greys clouded the horizon, and the slight breath of wind whipped the ashes of some former plant life around Luke’s vision. 

His ship had been brought down on one of the only cliffs in the area. Most of the landscape ran down into a valley of reddish dirt, covered in a layer of the ashen plant life. In the distance, Luke could almost make out another rock outcropping. It seemed to call to him, reaching out. It was the same sort of vibration that rang out through the whole planet that called to him. It was unusually strong with the force, but in an older sense. It was as if it was only a shell of what it had been. 

Luke swung his legs out of the ship, landing on the craggy rocks beneath him. R2 let out a series of warning beeps. 

“Stay with the ship, R2.” 

R2 buzzed discontentedly. 

“Of course I’ll be back to get you.” Luke turned back. “And if I’m not, you’ll just have to come pick me up.” He smiled, and slapped his hand lightly on the X-Wing as R2 spun around. 

Luke turned his head back to the mountain in the distance. There was no source of light in the sky, no indication if it would ever get dark, if there was some sort of night cycle on this planet. He sighed, looking off in the distance. 

Well, here goes nothing. 

He set off, sliding down the cliffs of the rubble, clutching at the rocky gravel as it came off. Dust swirled around him as the plateau with the X-Wing grew smaller, and he was able to distinguish that the mountains that called him were in fact the remnants of buildings. 

The light of the day had started to fade through the haze of whatever atmosphere the planet had. Luke’s legs were starting to ache as he began to climb the mountain in front of him to the citadel that had called him. 

By the time he’d reached the entrance, the world below him had receded into darkness. Luke could no longer make out the familiar plateau with his ship across the vast expanse of the desert. Wind carried dirt and rocks around him as he pulled himself up to face the wide maw of the citadel. 

From the outside, the tower looked fairly plain. It was taller than any of the mountains around it, and had a balcony near the top, Beyond that, it looked like it had once held something near there that was long gone. 

The wind whispered in Luke’s ear. He turned around suddenly, almost sensing a presence behind him. There was nothing. The whispering continued, almost distinguishable as something, and it drove Luke further into the building. 

The darkness seemed to become deeper the further Luke ventured. He sparked his lightsaber, the blue illuminating great walls around him. 

Suddenly, there was a shift within the sand behind him. It swirled against the back of his ankles, flowing into the air in front of him. 

Luke raised the lightsaber higher as the sand grew, ebbing and flowing with the wind. His pulse quickened as a voice echoed out across the chamber. 

_“Are you… The One?”_

Light seemed to emanate from within the sand as it swirled, creating faces Luke thought he saw for only moments. More voices swirled in the sand, less distinct. He lowered his lightsaber to the side. 

The sand took a circular shape, and the inside of the area began to flicker with purples and blues. 

Luke felt the pull of the force as the wind thickened behind him. He stumbled forward and looked through the sandy portal. Taking a breath in, he stepped forward into the dark abyss. 

The world became silent for a moment, the sounds of sand and wind dying out, but the voices remained. Luke recognized none of them, but somehow, they all sounded familiar. He sheathed his lightsaber, letting the ambient light of the white path beneath him be his guide.  
He was in a place that reminded him of the depths of space around him in his X-Wing, but it was different. He could breathe, for one. There was no crushing weight of low oxygen that he’d have to protect against. In fact, it was mostly the opposite. Instead of feeling crushed, he felt the force spiraling outwards from within him. He reached out his hand, tracing the white banked path as it fed off into the distance. Looking back, he saw the white outline of a circular door, leading back to wherever he had come from. 

The voices called out to him as Luke walked along the path. There was no end in sight, just the path, and the door behind him. 

Luke walked for some time before the voices started getting to him. He grasped at his head, trying to hold his ears away from them. He gritted his teeth.

“What do you want from me?” He knelt down across the path, the circular door small behind him. 

Luke closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. Voices whispered to him, but one, there was one that had a familiar lilt to it. 

_Obi-wan._

_“Who’s the more foolish? The fool, or the one who follows him?”_

Luke looked up. 

“Obi-wan?”

_“Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.”_

Luke turned his head around, but the voices seemed to be coming from all over. When he turned back, another door appeared at the edge of his path. Luke’s eyebrows perked in confusion. 

He stood up again, just as the world shifted beneath him, and he was sliding down the path below him, and swallowed up by the door that had just opened. 

When Luke opened his eyes, he was in the dark. Parts floated out in front of him from great gray masses. The walls were thick, geometrical, but broken apart. From among the wreckage, he could see that this was on some sort of large, derelict ship, adrift in space. 

He tried to steady himself to stand against the wall, but felt his hand lazily drift through what he thought was solid. 

Luke looked down at his hands in shock. They were tinted a bit blue with the lighting, but other than that they were normal. He tried to grab at the wall again with no avail. 

He drifted through the walls, trying to pull at the force that’d brought him here. There was something strong within these walls, something-

Luke stopped, faced with the bridge of the ship.  
There was a man that sat there who had to be Luke’s age. He sat cross-legged on the floor, meditating as Obi-wan had shown him. 

Luke wandered over to him, looking down at the floor.  
The man suddenly looked up at Luke, making eye contact. His eyes were bright with light, clouded as if they contained the streaks of hyperspace within them.  
Luke tried to kneel down next to him, but found the world shifting again as the man’s eyes grew brighter, and Luke fell into the hyperspace of whatever the force was trying to show him. 

He blinked, and the world grew quiet. They were on the plains of some planet, looking out across a sea of grain. To the side, the man he’d found was standing next to him in a cloak. 

He turned to face Luke.

Luke stared, looking him up and down, wondering how this man had so easily taken him from the depths of whatever former starship he was on to this… place.

“Are you some sort of Jedi?” Luke inquired softly.

The man turned away. 

“I’m not sure anymore. Maybe I was, at some point.”

“Who were you then?” Luke knew he was prying, but the question begged to be asked.

He folded his arms. 

“Five years ago, I was known as Ezra Bridger.”

“You defeated Admiral Thrawn at the Battle of Lothal.”

Ezra smiled. 

“Unfortunately, I wasn’t really, quite able to defeat him. Just more of a delay that will bear down on us soon enough.”

Luke nodded. 

“You didn’t really call an entire army of space whales to carry you out, did you?”

Ezra let out a breath and bounced on his feet a bit.

“It’s a lot easier than you’d expect. Come on, you’re a force wielder right?”

Luke grimaced. 

“I’m trying.”

Ezra paused for a second, and reached out his hand. 

“I suppose…If there’s one thing I’ll be able to teach you…”

His voice petered out as Luke watched his gaze.  
Suddenly, a loth-cat peered out of the grass, excitedly hopping into Ezra’s face. 

Luke laughed as it managed to tackle him to the ground, almost catching Ezra off guard. 

He offered Ezra a hand getting up, smiling. 

Ezra took it cautiously. 

“...I was wondering if that’d hold up.” He shook his head and took in a breath. “Okay, Luke, now you try. Connect with the Loth-cat.” 

“Seriously? It’s a cat.”

Ezra shook his head at him. 

“They’re about 90% scoundrel if you ask me.”

Luke sighed and reached out a hand like Ezra had done, trying to see the cat within the force. 

His mind was open as it could be to whatever pathetic life form was willing to pick up on it. 

He couldn’t see the cat. He lowered his hand in frustration. 

“ _Argh_ , Ezra, I just can’t do this.”

Ezra narrowed his eyes. 

“Then you must examine what’s holding you back.”

“I don’t see anything that should keep me from talking to a tooka here.”

“Not that’s holding you back from that, Luke. From your connection with the force.”

Luke stopped, staring into Ezra’s eyes again. His mouth opened as if to say something, but he managed to stop himself.

He scoffed and turned to the loth-cat again. 

What’s holding you back from the force, Luke?

The Empire isn’t here to scare us away this time. You’re allowed to be a Jedi, without the fear of hiding. 

Even if you’re the last one left. 

I never asked to be the poster boy for the revolution.

The loth-cat in front of him stared up into his eyes. 

Luke suddenly saw himself through the tooka, holding his hand out. He saw its breathing, its small but powerful legs. 

Luke blinked, gasping. 

Ezra chuckled. 

“I suppose that’s a good sign then?”

Luke turned to look at him.

“You did that with the space whales?” 

Ezra shifted, crossing his arms.

“Well, you know, something like that.” He laughed again. “You know Luke, you wear the things that tie you back as plain as you wear your face.” 

They were face to face now. 

“You must learn to accept the path you have chosen to take, just as I have.” 

He gently reached up to Luke’s forehead, resting three fingers just in the center. 

The world flashed white, and then gray, and then into the pitch black of space. 

Luke felt himself groggily waking up, hands tingling. He was back in the cockpit of his X-Wing, drifting through space. 

R2 gave him a few indignant clucks. 

They hadn’t moved from where they’d dropped out of hyperspace.


	2. Chapter 2

Luke had known about Ezra Bridger, tangentially of course. He’d heard members of Phoenix Squadron talk about him in association with Kanan, one of the survivors of the great Jedi Purge. 

But they were both dead. They’d made great sacrifices at the Battle of Lothal to pull out a stunning victory there. So Luke made the assumption that he had been able to communicate with the force ghost of Ezra. 

“Tell me more about him,” he’d asked the hologram of Sabine once he’d gotten back from his mission.   
Sabine just shook her head. 

“At least where you last saw him? Where he was headed?”

“He was on the Chimera when it was ripped to shreds by the Pergil jumping to hyperspace, Luke. He’s gone.”

Luke looked down. So Sabine had already given up the search, long ago.

“I saw him, Sabine. He is alive.”

“What’s your sudden fascination with him anyways?”

Luke held his hand on the edge of the comm station and looked down. His fascination with Bridger was built on the hope that he was alive, and more clearly, that he would be able to give him a more solid footing in starting the new Jedi Order. It wasn’t that Luke didn’t want to, he was just untrained, clunky, and didn’t really know what to expect. Ezra had read that from him in an instant. 

“Well, if I’m starting a new order, I’ve got to start somewhere, right?”

Sabine sighed. 

“I’m on Lothal currently. Pop by if you feel like wasting my time in person.” 

Luke smiled. A reluctant acceptance. 

“You can count on it.”

The holo shut off with a click. 

Luke sighed. He was going to Lothal. 

___

Wind rushed over the sprawling grain fields as Luke looked off into the distance. He had missed being in the open like this, with no trees or temples to get in the way of seeing the horizon. Lothal had a sense of familiarity to it, despite having never set a foot on the planet. 

He swung around to enter the town before him, set on meeting with Sabine at the comm tower where she was working. 

He passed through the streets, revealing in the anonymous gaze the viewers had. They didn’t know who he was, and Luke was never going to find out who they were. A street vendor offered him a jogan fruit. Luke waved him off, intent on passing without conversation. A small scuffle broke out behind him, but it was none of his business. Just the life here. Locals. 

Luke spotted the comm tower across the path. He quickly walked up from it and disappeared from the privacy of the crowded streets. 

Stairs wound their way up the many floors of the building, across flickering lighting that indicated platforms. Luke passed it all. He was going to reach the top, that was it. 

The floor leveled out at the top, drawing the light of the late afternoon across the comm equipment, the holo tables, and the woman he was meeting with. 

Sabine Wren. 

Luke entered the room quietly, folding his hands in front of him. 

Sabine was focused on some map she had pulled up in front of her, charting flight paths of some sort across the galaxy. She peered through a few systems to make eye contact with Luke and shut off the holo suddenly. 

Luke nodded as a greeting. 

Sabine paced toward him to lean on the side of the projector. 

“So you saw him.”

“I believe so.”

“Then let’s go get him.”

Luke shifted at the determination in Sabine’s voice. 

“I just don’t think it’s going to be that simple Sabine. I don’t have a location or- or even a start on where he could be.”

Sabine crossed her arms. 

“Then we go to the place where the mystery signal originated. It’s the closest thing we have to anything at this point.”

Luke closed his eyes and reached out into the force. The strongest thing he could feel was Sabine’s roadblock of deteriorated determination. 

“You gave up long before this, then?”

Sabine looked away. 

“Ezra always said he was counting on me. And I could never figure out what for, for the longest time, but I know it’s something. He’s counting on me to find him, Luke. But I can’t.”

Luke sighed. 

“Not without help. Listen, I’ve read about Jedi that could trace trails through space using the force, and maybe, with enough practice….” He trailed off watching Sabine lose interest. 

It was an empty promise he’d made. He wasn’t the Jedi they needed for this operation. 

“Luke, I appreciate the effort from you, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to find him. It’s high time you start thinking that way too.” 

She turned around and pulled up the holo again. 

Luke turned away, back to the stairs. He paused at the door. 

“I’m sorry, Sabine.” He disappeared into the dark of the hallway, spiraling down the staircase to the afternoon outside. 

It was as if nothing had changed. The alien selling jogan fruit was still there, vendors still sprawled across the street. They didn’t know that he’d just given up the hunt for the galaxy’s only other living Jedi master on the principle that they’d already tried. 

Luke wanted to be angry, but he knew it would be misplaced. He would just have to find the resolve to do this on his own, to research everything they’d already tried and failed at. 

He was so caught up in planning that he almost didn’t see a large rebellion ship hover across the plains. 

Almost. 

His senses picked up on it before his eyes, and soon, Luke was running back to the comms tower. He didn’t know who was aboard that ship. He just had a feeling, a good feeling that someone was there to help. 

___

The shape of pointed head-tails greeted him as he burst into the comm room again. Sabine turned around from talking to the figure. 

“You-You’re Ahsoka Tano! I’ve heard so much-”

The togruta lowered her hood.

“Luke Skywalker.”

Luke stopped by the side of the table. 

“Yes.”

Something shifted in her eyes. Sabine grabbed her helmet from the table. 

“I was just about to comm you, Luke. Ahsoka also has a lead on Ezra, and with both of you providing information, we should be able to get somewhere.”

Luke looked up, betrayed by the incredulous look on his face.

Ahsoka smiled back at him. 

“Luke. It’s time that you were taught some of the more, well, specific abilities the force can give you.”

“You don’t mean that you’ve just showed up now to teach me how to find Ezra?”

Ahsoka laughed. 

“No. More like I’m here to help you interpret what you saw in your vision.”

Luke smiled. He’d heard various stories of Ahsoka Tano, padawan to his father during the Clone Wars, who’d left the order at the height of its downfall. 

He never thought he’d meet her until he’d heard whispers that she might be alive. Started of course, by Ezra at its heart. 

She gestured back to the ship parked behind the building. 

“It’s time we got going.” 

Luke turned to look at Sabine, finding a few pre-departure requests coming to mind only to be quickly silenced by the look of determination he was met with. 

He settled, and began to walk towards the ship with the duo. 

It almost felt nice to not be the driving force behind the mission, the person that everyone was counting on. Luke had missed that working back in the Alliance where everyone expected to have some wizarding insight to the situation. He sighed as he crossed the threshold into the ship, and felt the world shift beneath him as the ship’s engines took off into the atmosphere.

___

Luke had done his best to describe his memories to Ahsoka. It wasn’t easy. 

She was mostly caught up on the original signal, and the planet he encountered when he sought it out. She said that she’d encountered a similar phenomenon in the Clone Wars, with his father. It was a place called Mortis, a lens where the force focused itself through three individuals, now long dead. 

Here, Sabine took over the story. She told Luke of the temple on Lothal, and how the Empire tried to use it to decipher the world between worlds. 

“It’s where we found Ahsoka, at least for the first time,” she explained. 

Luke nodded. He’d definitely seen something similar within the depths of Mortis, with the paths at least. He pictured the path, eyes closed, force tickling his fingertips. The galaxy stretched out before him, tilting to guide him. 

Ahsoka laid her hand on Luke’s shoulder, and the force seemed to clarify its meaning. He saw the ship again, but this time, from the underside, where a great monster of some sort sprawled out. It was just tingling at the edge of Luke’s mind, the name of the ship, the-

“ _The Chimaera.”_

Ahsoka voiced what Luke’s mind alone couldn’t come up with. The ship that Ezra was on. The ship that had taken him and the Pergil into deep space, into…

In a flash, Luke saw the path. He reached out with the force to the ship’s controls and directed the few buttons that he knew would lead them to the location he saw in his head. The ship lurched and threw Luke and Ahsoka apart. 

Luke shook his head out as the ship departed into hyperspace, towards coordinates he didn’t even realize he’d put in. 

Sabine whirled around from the captain’s chair. 

“Are you guys done with your hokey religious ceremony here yet? We’ve got a kid to rescue here.”

Luke scooted around on the floor, smiling. 

“You think we’ve really got a chance here?”

“Well, I haven’t really seen anything else like that, so I guess I’m giving you guys the chance.”

Ahsoka stood behind them. 

“Luke, get some rest before we pull out of hyperspace. You’re going to need it.”

Luke nodded and pushed past the two, passing deeper into the ship. 

What if he were leading them in the wrong direction? Worse yet, what if he were leading them into a trap? He shook the thought. Everything was up to the force now.

___

The ship began the slow rock of exiting hyperspace. It woke Luke from his meditation before he could hear Sabine shift in the cockpit to come to retrieve him. 

“We’re coming up on, well wherever it is we are.”

Luke opened his eyes and stood, grabbing his bag from the room before making his way with Sabine to the front. Ahsoka sat in the captain’s chair, manning the front of the ship. 

“We’re coming up on it… Now.” 

Lights in the cabin turned red with a proximity alert. Ahsoka eased the ship out of the hyperspace lane and into what appeared to be a field of debris, scattered over a field of a dark green planet hovering in the distance. 

Luke scanned the area. It certainly matched what he’s seen in his vision but it seemed like more time had been able to pass. The ship had drifted further apart than Luke had seen. 

A large piece drifted in front of them, adorned with the snaking mural that adorned the hull of the Chimaera. 

“We’re here then.” Sabine voiced from behind Luke and Ahsoka. 

Ahsoka paused. 

“He’s not here.” She closed her eyes and tried to focus. 

“What do you mean? Of course he’s here, this is the place I saw on Mortis. He’s got to be here.”

“-Yeah, this is the Chimaera, where else could he be, Ahsoka?”

Ahsoka closed her eyes to reach further out. 

“He’s not among the wreckage in space.”

“Then what about the planet there? It’s not infeasible that they crash-landed,” Sabine pointed out. 

Ahsoka paused and opened her eyes. 

“Tell me, Luke. What do you sense from this scene? The moon, the scattered parts?”

Luke eyed her warily. He held his hand up though, trying to focus what he was feeling. He couldn’t seem to sense anything from the wreckage, or the planet. Not with so many eyes on him. 

“I can’t do it Ahsoka. I don’t feel anything here.”

She nodded. 

“It’s not just you, Luke. This place is a strange lull in the force. Where there would be some semblance of life, there is nothing. Even from the planet.”

“Then we have to go investigate,” Sabine added.

“Come on Ahsoka. We’ve got to at least try to look for him on the planet.”

Batting her eyes with a smile, Ahsoka complied. 

“Well, it will at least give us another thing to rule out.” She sighed as they avoided the broken wreckage and descended to the planet. 

Green covered the landscape. Luke was still trying to get used to it, honestly, how many trees and grasses some planets had. The galaxy was a sprawling mass, and Tatooine was just one heap of sand. 

Burn marks rutted into the landscape where the Chimera had fallen out of orbit. Trees parted around the biggest pieces. Ahsoka landed the ship across one of the deepest channels. 

Dirt crackled around them as the trio disembarked.   
“Can you feel anything here, Luke,” Ahsoka seemed distraught. 

Luke calmly shook his head and started following the channels. They all seemed to lead up to a greater mass of the ship, building up to a great mountain of wreckage. Luke looked up. Something about the scene was familiar. He traced the outline of the ship’s broken pieces against the sky. 

He remembered the mountains on Mortis, tracing the mountains there, and then the tower where he’d ended up. 

In place of the tower on Motris, there was the Star Destroyer’s main bridge. 

“He’s up there.” Luke pointed up at the bridge, shielding his eyes from the sunlight. 

Sabine spun her blasters. 

“Well then, let’s go get him.” She pushed past Luke, still staring, and broke out in a brisk walk to the wreckage. Luke and Ahsoka fell in after her, eyes wide with caution. 

They passed older, charred out electronics, the bodies of a few stormtroopers, and wires sticking out of the sides of the metal plates. Soon, they began to climb. Sabine hovered up while Ahsoka and Luke jumped from the platforms, and soon, sweat-soaked and out of breath, they reached the top of the ship. 

“I used to think these-” Luke paused for a breath, “These things- that they’d be much smaller.” He smiled and shook his head at the maw of the ship. 

The purrgil had obviously done a number on the front of the ship. Tentacle marks adorned the sides, and the front had been blown out, allowing the trio to walk in smoothly. 

Luke had seen this before. This had been where Ezra was sitting before. 

Now it was dust-covered, long abandoned. 

He narrowed his eyes. 

“This was where I saw him before. It has to be where I saw him.” Luke paced around aimlessly. He gestured at the spot where Ezra had sat before him and knelt down to feel the ground. 

He felt a spark in the force, a momentary glimpse into something, and he knew he had to dig further. Luke sat down fully, meditating. 

He felt Ahsoka and Sabine shrug, and turn to leave.   
Luke was alone on a foreign planet, trying to look for a long-dead friend. 

___

Hours passed. The sun dangled across the horizon when Luke finally opened his eyes. 

He’d heard Ahsoka and Sabine start to come back, presumably to check on him, so he’d gather his things and start to pack up. He turned, only to see the tell-tale white of stormtrooper armor meet his gaze. 

Yellow-orange in the sunset, he sparked his lightsaber, trying to deflect the bolts, but it was too late. He’d been caught off guard, and soon the troops surrounded him. 

Luke glanced down and took a breath. 

He felt someone behind him, a familiar presence of some sort, also take in a breath. He didn’t have time to process who it was. He felt the stormtroopers in front of him. 

He attacked. He jabbed his lightsaber out first, taking the head trooper with it. He used the momentum to spin back towards the left, stepping aside from the stray blaster fire. 

Soon the three in front of him were down, and he whirled around to face the others. 

However, he was met face to face with another person. A very familiar face, and toppling stormtroopers behind him.

Ezra Bridger was standing face to face with him, noses almost touching. Luke could feel his heavy breaths across his cheeks. 

He put away his lightsaber, glancing down. When he looked back up, Ezra was gone, and the stormtroopers that had littered the room with him. 

Luke blinked again. The room stood still. Dust covered surfaces where he’d thought there’d been a scuffle. 

And where was Ezra? He’d seen him. He knew he had. He had been right here, in front of his face, staring into his eyes, guiding him, fighting beside him, and now he was completely gone. 

Luke sighed and turned to head outside. 

The soft sunset light hit his face with the unexpected wind. It was relatively calm until Luke looked down at the base of the wreckage. 

Ahsoka and Sabine were being shoved down, hands bound by stormtroopers. Luke jumped down, lightsaber blazing, just to see a tall figure of a man appear from the underbrush.   
“So, a Mandalorian, a Jedi, and one Ahsoka Tano somehow found our planet here, and have decided to pay us a visit.” A man with pale blue skin walked into the fading light of day. His eyes glinted red as the setting sun.

“Thrawn.” Sabine spat out the name behind him. 

“How perceptive.”


	3. Chapter 3

They walked the winding path through the roots and leaves, down beneath what they had thought was the surface. Roots provided a stable enough bed to walk on, but Luke saw that the levels of the planet descended much deeper, like vines wrapping around a thick tree trunk. Flames lit their way through the dark. 

A blaster was pressed against his back, but Luke did not attempt to push it away. The odds were too great, and since Thrawn seemed to be very much alive, he didn’t dare to push his luck. Ahsoka and Sabine met him with a quiet agreement. 

Deeper they pushed, falling away from the quiet surface to an even quieter, darker depth. 

The group reached a large opening within the roots. Luke couldn’t see across the room, but now he could feel the quiet echoes of beings in the force. Probably more stormtroopers. And yet, there was something familiar to one of them. Probably just an echo of Ahsoka. Luke didn’t allow himself to speculate for hope. 

Thrawn paused in the middle of the dimly lit room. Flares of the torches flickered on the roots of the cave. 

“So. Now that I’ve brought you into my, hallowed hall here,” Thrawn paced in front of the group, “I’m prepared to make a deal with you.”

“We’ll never give you anything you want, Thrawn!” Sabine kicked out at the stormtrooper holding her.

“Oh, but you already have, you just don’t realize it yet.” He started pacing. “You see since we’ve been stranded here not a single ship has ventured into this sector of the galaxy. Our long-range transmitters are shot. We need your ship’s, uh, _capabilities_ of transmitting long range so we can call for help- do you follow?”

Luke connected the dots in his head. Thrawn had been stuck here for five years, all alone on this planet because he couldn’t send a signal for someone to pick them up. Thrawn didn’t know that the Empire wouldn’t be looking for him. He didn’t know what world he’d be stepping into.   
“What will you offer us in return?” Ahsoka spoke up, matching Thrawn’s soft tone. 

Thrawn paused and gave her a light smile. 

“I can assure you that you’ll be willing to make this trade.” He turned back slightly to a trooper behind him, giving him a surreptitious wave. The stormtrooper disappeared into the darkness of the back of the room. 

He came back accompanied by a form at his back, dressed in the dark black of an imperial officer. 

Sabine gasped. Luke tried to get a closer look. 

“I’m sure you’d be willing to do, nearly anything for one of your own, correct?”

Ezra Bridger walked into the light of the flickering flames, eyes blank, expression not giving any hints. 

“Ezra!” Sabine exclaimed. 

Ezra tilted his head as if trying to hear her. 

“S-Sabine?” 

His statement was light but rang out across the room. 

“Yes, Ezra, it’s us, it’s time to come home.”   
“Home…. I- I can’t.”

Thrawn laughed silently in the corner, before turning to a stormtrooper and heading out of the room. 

Noting this, Luke turned to Ahsoka. 

“Thrawn’s on the move. We have to get Erza out of here now before he steals our ship.”

Sabine’s eyebrows shot up. Apparently she hadn’t connected as many dots as Luke had. 

“Okay, Luke- get Ezra to come with us- if anyone you can. We’ll go after Thrawn, ready Ahsoka?” 

Ahsoka nodded solemnly. 

Sabine lashed out, striking the nearest two stormtroopers, kicking in their knees where they stood, using that momentum to bring her up, facing off with them standing now. Ahsoka likewise stood, facing their opposition with avoidant grace. 

Luke stood calmly, not focused on the battle, just trying to meet the eyes of the clouded gaze of Ezra. 

What was going on in his head? What had happened in those five long years that he’s spent alone with the Empire?   
“Do you know me, Ezra Bridger?” 

Ezra’s gaze shook slightly lower, but then met his again.

“I’m not sure if we’ve met, Luke.”

They were a foot apart now, ignoring the blaster fire from behind where they stood. Sabine and Ahsoka were always good at creating a mess. 

Luke scoffed at Ezra’s non-response. He shook his head, allowing his hair to cover his eyes just a bit. 

“I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.”

“If you think I need rescuing, you must’ve known a different me. Now… it’s different. I’m different.” Ezra crossed his arms. ”I’ve spent years waiting for my friends to return, but as Thrawn said, you were too busy fighting the war.” 

“the war needed to be fought to free the galaxy, and now it’s over, come back with us.”

Ezra perked up. 

“The war is… It’s over?”

“Yes. We defeated the Emperor at the Battle of Endor and we’ve been chasing out the traces ever since then. Well there’s a lot more too it actually, but basically we’re setting up a New Republic, like the old one, but with less. Sith in it.” 

Luke almost saw a glint of a smile on Ezra’s face. 

“So what will you say? Come back to the world, help me to start a new Jedi order?”

Ezra’s expression was swallowed by the darkness again.

“I’m not sure I can do that right now. Not with you at least. Being a new Jedi, starting the galaxy up on getting more Jedi isn’t my path.”

Luke sighed. 

“Well, it wasn’t my idea of mine either, but I can’t make that choice for you.”

It wasn’t Luke’s place to meddle in the affairs of whatever destiny Ezra saw for himself. Stopping Thrawn from leaving the planet, now that he could meddle in. 

He turned around to leave the room, but felt a light hand graze across his before he could take a step.

He stopped, almost holding his breath as Ezra undid the handcuffs that held his hands. He turned back around, waiting for an explanation that never came. Ezra just met his gaze. 

“I cannot promise I’ll help you with the new order, but I will return with you. You’ve gotta help me get out.”

Luke smiled. 

“You’re going to need this then.” He reached for his belt, and handed Ezra the lightsaber that Sabine had been so keen he take earlier. 

Ezra turned it over in his hands, examining the work he’d done years ago on the blade. Luke stepped back as Ezra lit the green blade, bathing the room in an emerald glow. In similar fashion, Luke sparked his, smiling. 

“Let’s get out of here.” 

Ezra slowly, deliberately started to take steps out of the cavern. Luke watched him start slowly, but then followed as he broke out into a run. Luke followed, knowing Ezra would be more familiar with the directions the tunnels flowed in. 

Without much trouble, they reached the surface, meeting the darkness and blaster fire with equal energy. 

Luke watched Ezra try to remember his forms, blocking blast after blast, swinging down with a little less-than-textbook form three attack. Despite not having the correct details of the fighting style, he managed to make it flow together better than anything Luke had been able to do. It was mesmerizing. Watching him twist in the air was unlike anything Luke had ever seen. 

A laser bolt darting past his ear woke Luke back up to the present. He pressed forward, meeting up with Ahsoka and Sabine at the front, where Sabine was locked in combat with Thrawn. Ezra ran over to them while Luke defended the perimeter with Ahsoka, blasting bolts, trying to keep that duo safe. 

Luke shouted out to Ahsoka to start the ship, trying to make their getaway before they needed it. Ahsoka complied, running off, leaving the front to Luke. He hones in his senses, trying to feel the laser bolts before they crossed his path. It was not easy by any means. 

It meant toning out all the other sounds. It meant fighting the urge to turn around and watch Ezra again. It meant shoving his emotions down deeper than he could feel them, and only focus on what was happening in front of him. It meant ignoring the sounds of pain from behind him as Ezra cried out. 

Luke couldn’t manage it. He turned around to see Ezra on the ground, fallen over, with Sabine holding her own. The ship sparked to life in the background, and Luke found himself sprinting over to Ezra’s side, lifting him from the ground, jumping into the cargo hold just as the ship took off. 

Sabine had managed to kick Thrawn down just as she made her jump, proclaiming that that was “-the last we’d be seeing of him for a while.”

Luke let out a breath of relief as he set down Ezra in the cargo bay, his arms giving out from the day. 

Ezra blinked up at him, eyes wide. 

“Did we get him?”

Luke chuckled, pushing back on his feet. 

“Well, I wouldn’t really say we. Sabine held her own.”

Ezra let out a few coughs. “What was up with that planet?”

Ahsoka appeared at the top of the cargo bay. 

“While I don’t have the exact answers, my speculation is that there was some sort of drain in the force there. It was sucking the life out of everything that dared to live there at some point.”

Luke nodded. “I felt that.”

Ezra tried to sit up, propping up his side with an arm. He mumbled Luke’s name slightly as he fell back down. 

“-Luke. I can’t help you teach.”

“I’d say. Your form is lousy and you got hit in about ten seconds worth of a fight with Thrawn.”

They both laughed. 

“But, Luke, I will help you find _whatever_ you need to start whatever it is you want to do.”

Luke smiled. He hadn’t expected that kind of proposition. 

“Of course. Thank you. Thanks, yeah.”

Now all Luke had to do was find an interesting enough lead on absolutely anything. He promised to himself that he would.


	4. Chapter 4

Ezra didn’t feel like he belonged back in the real world. The galaxy had managed to change almost beyond recognition from what he’d left it as. 

Luke had defeated Darth Vader, and Darth Vader had defeated the Emperor. The Empire was gone, and they needed to find a way to settle down, make peace with each other after twenty long years of being at war. 

It was difficult to parse. Hera and Sabine had reached out to him and they’d been good for him, but they had been able to move on, while for Ezra he didn’t really see that as a choice. He couldn’t move on without any sort of real closure on _anything_. 

Five years. It had been such a small blip in the cosmic timeline that he’d been gone, but so much had changed. 

Ezra spent more time alone now than he had when he was an orphan on Lothal. Sometimes he chose hyperspace coordinates at random to jump to, and just sat there, meditating. It was his way of getting away from things. 

He couldn’t decide if he wanted to be a part of the New Jedi Order. He so desperately wanted to tone out everyone’s calls for Luke to start something and help him out with it, but something kept holding him back. It was as if he wouldn’t know where to start. He didn’t know barely anyone in the Rebel Alliance, well, rather the Alliance now that could support him. Luke had his sister, his step-brother, even that seven foot tall walking carpet seemed to care for him and his efforts. 

Luke seemed to care enough about you. Luke seemed to want to rescue you, and he seemed to understand what you’re going through. 

But how could he? The poster boy for the revolution could fit in anywhere. 

Ezra heard a far off door open and close. He’d been staying on Chandrila, the current capital of the New Republic. It was warmer here than he’d like it to be, but Lothal had always been more temperate than anything. The door to his room swung open. 

Above him, Luke Skywalker stood, tall but slouching. 

Ezra looked up from his cross-legged seat on the floor. 

“I’ve found a mission for us, Ezra. If you’re willing to come, of course.”

Ezra tilted his head. What was the shining star doing here? Shouldn’t he be training, finding younglings? Doing holo shoots?

He managed to stand up and shake his head. 

“What sort of mission? I’d just figure you’ve got better things to be running off to do.”

Luke looked down, leaning against the door. Light from the corridor shone in behind him, illuminating his golden blond hair. 

“Not as much as you’d expect, honestly.”

There was something that he’d left unsaid there. Ezra didn’t want to press him further than Luke was comfortable with. They were toeing the edge of being friends so far. 

Luke shook his head with sudden realization. 

“Oh, right! The mission. See, I’ve narrowed down a few locations from Kanan’s holocron, and…”

Luke began to explain just how he’d managed to triangulate the location of a suspected Jedi temple. Ezra opted to just watch him talk, watching as the light caught the edge of his smile when he leaned backwards just a bit, how the edge of his collar was just a bit out of place. How he made eye contact with him when Ezra confirmed it would probably take two force wielders to open the temple. He watched as Luke pulled him up by an offered hand, and smiled lightly when Ezra reached out to smooth over his collar. 

It was a small moment in time. Smaller than the cosmic scaled five years he’d spent beneath the world. Because, force, he’d really had the audacity to run off to “Go start the ship.” Right then. Which left Ezra grasping for ends, trying not to blush furiously. 

He sat down again, and started to make his mental packing list. 

Stars, that boy was going to be the death of him.  
___

“So no, no wait, Luke, you’ve gotta start your form four moves here,” Ezra mimed a lunge, “cause otherwise you’re going to leave your whole left side open, right?”

Luke stared at him, trying to mimic the fluid motion that Ezra had demonstrated, but failing wondrously. His lightsaber looked odd in his hand, coming out at obtuse angles.

“Well, I guess I never had time to learn the basics.” Luke shrugged. 

Huh. If five years was a miniscule blip on Ezra’s radar, it must have been even smaller for Luke’s Jedi training. He took in a breath to show him again. One, two, three…  
___

They came out of hyperspace with a shift of the ship’s sensors, all blinking in time. They hovered above an icy planet, and what looked like the remains of an Imperial base. 

“Why would they have an Imperial construction site out here?” Ezra mused.

“Rumor has it that they mined the kyber crystal to power the Death Stars here.”

“And in doing so destroyed most of the planet, huh.” So that’s what Saw Gerrera had been talking about. That was his mission, all those years ago. It sounded like he was a bit too late on that front. Like everything. 

“Yeah. There’s a chance the Jedi Temple may be intact though.”

“Well, let’s go check it out then!”

Luke smiled and swooped the ship down across the surface of the icy world. Ice crystals flew across the back of the ship as Luke set it down. 

“Should be around here somewhere. If I’m reading this right, and well, the sun’s in the right place, and we’re even on the right planet.”

“Can’t you have led us to a warmer planet, Luke I mean really?”

“You’re cold? I’m from the desert planet here.” Luke elbowed him on the shoulder. “If it’s here, it’d be across the way, along that cliff.”

Ezra nodded, bringing his hood up and pulling it tight. He could see the outline of something in the rocks ahead of them, temple or not it would provide some shelter from this blistering wind. He set off, reaching forward for Luke to keep him steady as they pressed onward, two dark specks on the painfully white horizon. 

After the longest three minutes of his life, Ezra pulled off his hood, standing against the wall of the glacier. Luke pulled off his, choosing to back up briefly, looking up at the wall. 

“I think we have to lift it!” He hollered through the wind. 

Ezra pushed off against his back, shuffling over to Luke’s position, leaning into him with the wind. He lunged his foot back into the snow, trying to anchor himself to the spot. Luke did likewise, putting his hand on Ezra’s shoulder. 

The wind fluttered around them as Ezra reached out with the force, willing the great block of ice in front of them to move. He felt Luke’s strength combine with his, a warm, welcome force to his own. 

The ice billowed snow from underneath, cracking along the center. The two halves separated just enough that Ezra figured he and Luke could fit through. 

He opened his eyes, letting down his hand, turning to Luke by his side. He noticed that Luke’s hand still sat on his shoulder, anchoring him to the spot. He looked up, meeting the eyes of his fellow Jedi. 

Luke’s hair swept in front of his eyes with the wind, eyelashes catching snowflakes in the blizzard. His heart skipped a beat. 

He looked down, shaking himself back to reality. Luke’s hand dropped back to his side. Ezra missed it already. 

“Let’s get out of this storm, Luke, come on!” Ezra half mumbled, half yelled. He couldn’t put together his feelings right now. More like he didn’t _want_ to. 

Jedi weren’t supposed to feel anything, much less for fellow Jedi. What were they though? The Jedi had died out before they were born. Well, almost on the day they were born, he thought with a laugh. 

He focused. He felt cold. He felt intrigued by the temple. He felt like they should get inside to look around. His breath fogged up in front of him as he pushed through the crack they’d made in the ice together, ignoring the pulsing in his fingers he felt when Luke’s hand accidentally brushed his. 

The crack opened up into a large area in front of them, where light shone in from above. Ezra took a breath, footsteps echoing across the chamber. He looked up and around the circular room. Across the ceiling were ancient Jedi runes, telling the story of various events that he couldn’t decipher. Various pictures clued him in though; this was the place that younglings traveled to in order to obtain their lightsaber crystals. The illustrations all seemed to point towards the entrance to a cave on the far side of the vestibule. 

“It’s gotta be in there Luke,” he said, ghosting his hand along where the drawings pointed, “whatever we’re looking for.”

Luke nodded. “Together then.”

Ezra stared straight ahead. There was no way this boy would get to him. Luke just needed another person to trust in this whole Jedi business. Ezra was still alone.

Only if he had to. Together then. 

The tunnels began to twist wildly, splitting off at angles, covered in icy rocks. Eventually, they came to a fork in the road, and silently agreed to part ways. They’d find each other again. 

Ezra held his arms to his chest as he walked alone down the path. It was colder down here for some reason. He felt the force pull at him down the path. He tried to tune out the other voices in his head. He wanted to be alone. He’d done better alone. 

He was caught in a time where he didn’t fit in anymore. His former role was gone, caught in the death of the Empire itself. If he had nothing to fight for, what good could he do?

His fists clenched against his chest. It wasn’t like he _didn’t_ want to help start a new Jedi Order. Teaching wasn’t exactly his style. He found solace here searching for things, seeking out old knowledge at the edge of the universe, breaking and entering forgotten temples. Maybe he could try to convince Luke that this was his part alone. 

Whatever he did, Ezra realized that he wanted Luke to be in his future somehow. Luke who was a Jedi, but only in name, not in training. Luke who likewise was caught five years behind him, still fixing moisture vaporators for his Uncle's farm.

Luke was also caught up in a time where he didn’t fit in. Ezra just hadn’t been able to see it. He felt for him as he reached out further in the cave, trying to see with the force. It led him to the right, up a hill, and straight into the other wandering Jedi. 

“Oh, there you are Ezra- look I wanted to-”

“Oh, can it Luke, I was just going to apologize and everything.” Ezra tried to brush off Luke’s all too affectionate expression. 

“Apologize? What for? I’ve got the books right here, I’ve got you, we can-”

“-I wanted to apologize for being a nerfherder towards you for the past few rotations. You’re a great person, and I’ve been ignoring who you want to be to try to make myself feel better.” Ezra glanced down at the ice covered floor. 

Luke set down the books, and reached out to him. 

“Well I’m sorry for not being the swashbuckling hero the galaxy thinks I am, you know, most of the time.The galaxy doesn’t need a hero anymore.”

Ezra met his eyes unsteadily. Luke brushed a few bunchings of snow off his shoulder. As he moved his hand back, Ezra caught Luke’s hand with his own, threading their fingers together, drawing them closer to each other. 

Ezra tilted his head. “Well, I mean that makes one of us. I’d take a hero anytime, especially if it’s you.”

He could feel Luke’s breath puffing against his own now, mixing in the condensation of the cave. The odd illumination of the walls sparkled in Luke’s eyes against the dark of the wall, turning his gaze into the stars of the galaxy. 

In just a heartbeat, Luke blinked and closed the distance between them with a light kiss. Ezra closed his eyes, reciprocating, leaning into Luke. He brought his hands up from his sides to Luke’s hair, finally running his hands through the soft locks as he’d imagined so many times. 

After a search longer than either of them could know, they’d finally found a bridge between their worlds.   
___

Ezra stood outside the New Jedi temple on Coruscant, watching as air speeders whizzed by. He heard the shouts of their new initiates training in the courtyard outside beneath the grand trees they’d managed to bring in. That he’d managed to find still living in the Outer Rim, untouched by the war. 

He paced through the halls, examining the art of the past that he’d dug up, meeting eyes with a few curious onlookers.

Ezra Bridger was no longer a Jedi in the traditional sense of course. He wouldn’t be a symbol of peace and justice in a newly established world, but he was something along the lines of a force-wielder. He was someone who searched for things, who tied connections to the world around him. 

And he always found himself back at the temple, for one reason or another. 

He rolled his eyes as he spotted a familiar form rushing across the way. 

“Luke!” He called out. 

In a shuffle of robes and tripping, Luke Skywalker rummaged down the stairs to greet Ezra. He handed his texts to a padawan passing by, greeting Ezra with a hug. He leaned over to place a light kiss on his cheek. 

“You know, you were gone for a bit longer than the two days you promised me, Ezra.”

“I said two and a half, Luke, I _swear_ I must’ve.” He brought his head back, just watching as Luke smiled up at him. 

It is our ties to other people that make us who we truly are, Luke would teach. You must learn to embrace the people around you, or you will find yourself lost within your own time period. 

They turned, hand in hand, and walked out of the temple.


End file.
